Two Prosocial Rejection Norms

Easier than changing the social norms of western society is to change yourself. In particular, you should labor to erase from yourself the "kindness" of wanting to avoid others having to reject you, that level of self-effacement isn't healthy at all. Imposing "pain" on others on the level of making others decide to reject you is a useful and very commonly used life skill, an inability to do this is likely to make others see you as a complete pushover.

Hey, wanna be friends? Keep in mind that I don't want to be friends unless you honestly want the same. I'll be happy if you say 'no' if you mean it, since that will have helped us both avoid wasting time on something we didn't want. :)

This is a weird example. Do you actually ask people to clearly label themselves as your-friend or not-your-friend? I never do. Even if it were very clear that it is just an invitation, I would still be a bit annoyed to receive such a question. There's no way I could answer "no" without being hit by a lingering sense of "being-a bad-person-who-doesn't-want-friends".

(is this a different type of meta-fear?)

Related:

• Reneging Prosocially [LW · GW]
• Tell Culture [LW · GW]

Situations like these are why i tend to prescribe to a notion of "Social Ninjitsu", that is: throwing things like compliments, invitations, etc and then ejecting yourself  out of the situation so that the other person cannot effectively respond, and does not feel it is expected of them on the spot. The only way for them to respond is to pretty much chase you down and stop you, which only happens if they have more than socially required desire to do so. In effect, those who do not chase you/try to find you, are emotionally and socially excused, and those who do chase you are already pres-elected as highly motivated to interact with you, AKA potential friends.

Great stuff Emrik!! I found value with this in my personal relationships :heart:

The funny thing is that I don't fear being rejected, but when I am I feel bad. But I normally fail to predict that I will feel bad. This can be harmful when you don't execute the proper emotional handling because you did not anticipate the emotions correctly.

The same happens when I turn down people. I might feel bad afterward. Somehow my brain did not really learn to anticipate my emotions, maybe because it did not get enough training data, as I am kind of a loner.

Maybe I'm being overly literal in this, but my first reaction to the chart of various fears is that the concept of asking to be friends is hugely underspecified. Like, what is the ask-ee committing to if they agree? ISTM that most of the problems in the chart are solved by replacing "let's be friends" with "Want to do (friendly activity)?" and iterating until friendship is achieved. This seems to fix problems 1-3 at the least, and maybe 4 as well.

Also, the frame of asking someone to be your friend seems wrong too. If, for example, you enjoy someone's company, why not just say that? There's nothing to "reject" in that case, just as the case for invitation to friendly activities. (Because turning down an invitation doesn't imply rejection of the inviter, so none of the fears or meta-fears really apply.)

Again, maybe I'm viewing this the wrong way, but the combination of this frame with the underspecified request itself seems like it practically invites rejection and all the meta-fears thereof.

From the bits of work I've done in the past with people with various social anxieties, a common theme is actually the person wanting not just to not be rejected, but actually wanting to be validated by other people... which does tend to result in over-asking and underconfident framing.

The anxious person is less likely to say something like, "Oh, you're cool, let's do X" because in their mind they are trying to get something rather than believing or feeling they have something to offer. The solution usually lies in addressing whatever issue created the need for external validation and/or the sense they have nothing to offer.

When you approach someone, include some words to the effect that you’ll gracefwly accept a rejection.

In most social situations outside of some really weird cases, it is no use to add disclaimers or clarifications. Doing this says one or more of

1. "I'm more worried about rejection than the average person who doesn't use those words". Being more worried about rejection than the average person is considered undesirable and itself makes you more likely to be rejected.

(This is true even though the statement claims to say that you are less worried about rejection. Because if you really weren't worried about rejection, you'd have no reason to say that you aren't worried about rejection.)

2. "I don't understand how to communicate my attitude towards rejection in the normal manner, so I'm doing it in this unusual manner instead". Not understanding how to communicate is undesirable and makes you more likely to be rejected.

I like that spelling "gracefwly". It reads right phonetically while looking cooler than the usual.

I would unironically suggest discussing this type of shyness with a good therapist or counselor, because it can arise from some rather detrimental habits of thought that you might benefit from identifying and thus gaining the ability to choose whether you want to modify them.

Levels 2 and up in your graphic read to me as ultimately fears of immaturity, and misplacement of personal responsibility.

Consider framing level 2 as fear of interacting with someone who lies to you about their preferences for whatever reason. Nice people lie for good reasons sometimes; it doesn't automatically make them bad people or something. But if you're interacting with someone who chooses to lie to you, and then suffers as a result of having made that choice, do you really want to make that suffering your problem?

Consider framing level 3 as an extreme desire to control someone else's experiences. By not approaching the person, you're saying that your idea of what's best for them is more important than giving them the choice of whether or not they want to interact with you. You're doing something uncomfortable for yourself in an attempt to control another person's experience in a way that doesn't seem to me like it ought to be any of your business. Try generalizing this to other parts of life, to see its absurdity: what if the stranger next to you in the grocery store had a really bad experience with your favorite food one time? Should you try to protect them from being reminded of that bad experience by not buying your favorite food, lest they see it in your cart? Not a perfect example, for sure, but it's another case of trying to control someone else's experiences in a way that's unreasonable to expect of yourself and ultimately not good for you.

Level 4 is like a combination of the two: fearing that you can't let other people make their own decisions, and living in a world where adults shouldn't be given choices lest they suffer due to the consequences of their own actions.

If you insist on holding a paradigm where you're responsible for others' experiences to the point of withholding choices from them, it seems you could turn it around as an argument for social interaction: What if these poor incompetent hypothetical people, who can't be trusted to say what they think or do what they prefer, actually want your friendship but are too shy and untrustworthy to pursue it first? What harms are you bringing them to by withholding your company?